Against the GrainConventional wisdom goes out the window in this issue's Roundtable discussionOne of the more interesting things about business intelligence (BI) technology is not how much it's advanced in the last 10 years. Rather, it's how little that technology has changed. That's one of the provocative discussion items among the Intelligent Enterprise Roundtable we have convened ("What's Next for Business Intelligence?") for this "BI Technology in Focus" issue. Although BI is a bread-and-butter subject for Intelligent Enterprise — and one covered in some respect in every issue — we explore the intricacies of its underlying technologies with acute diligence in one edition per year. Thus, in a manner reminiscent of our popular Special Data Management issue (May 9, 2002), in which we gathered several database technology luminaries, for this subject we convened four independent experts to discuss past, current, and future directions in BI technology: Seth Grimes (Alta Plana Corp.), Henry Morris (IDC), Nigel Pendse (The OLAP Report), and Philip Russom (Giga Information Group). I'm confident that they offer insights here you haven't read anywhere else. Usability vs. FunctionalityFor example, the dichotomy between "friendliness" and analytic functionality is among the more important controversies for BI analytics software companies. The value of making BI "mainstream" is assumed, but how well have the vendors executed on that strategy? To what extent have their products suffered or improved as a byproduct of that process? And what role have information workers and IT managers themselves played in the mainstreaming effort? The answers to these questions not only help explain the status quo but also suggest new ways for you to evaluate BI technology functionality and business value. Indeed, analytic robustness is a useful prism through which to examine this issue; the manner in which you choose to define that term explains a lot about what you expect from your BI applications. It would be impossible to discuss the current state of BI technology without mentioning real-time technology or business performance management (BPM). In 2002, the software vendor community hung their hats on these hooks with reassuring unanimity, but as the panelists point out, that's all the more reason to evaluate your functional and business requirements carefully. Real time and BPM imply very different feature sets, architectures, and deployment issues, but they share at least one characteristic: a close relationship to indisputable business drivers. In the former case, organizational "agility" is an emerging business imperative that strongly implies investments in real-time technology; in the latter, the post-Enron world will demand the greater enterprise transparency that is promised by BPM methodology and the IT platforms it executes on. And in fact, some types of real-time technology can be an enabler for certain BPM practices, such as collaborative financial modeling. The question, of course, is to what extent packaged software that promises to support these goals succeeds in doing so. And as some of the panelists point out, it's not entirely clear in every case that the vendors' professed goals and your goal are in alignment. For example, are real-time analytics truly of any business value, even for an "agile enterprise?" The panel's conclusions will surprise you. Where's the Beef?The highlights I offer here only scratch the surface; among other things, the panelists discuss the impact of open-source software on the BI industry, the effect of Web services protocols on the costs of development and deployment, and the corporate culture challenges that stymie widespread adoption. Furthermore, for a sidebar, we asked contributing editor Erik Thomsen of DSS Lab Inc. to provide his views on another important emerging technology in business analytics: intelligent agents. Have your own ideas about the state of BI technology? Send them to me at jkestelyn@cmp.com.
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